Class notes on "Wuthering Heights"

- ABOVE: (from left) Emily Bronte, Laurence Olivier, and Merle Oberon - I love old films and film stars.

Class Notes:

- Wednesday & Friday, Laurence Olivier version of Wuthering Heights!

- What does *(character) do that helps people better understand scene *(what scene)? (2nd half of the book, to be written after seeing the movie) - write about 5 paragraphs; OR, get a scholarly article about the book, and write about it.

- Discuss Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship - are they soul mates?

- "I am not your husband!" - subtext being, "- but I should be."

- Who is he going to get revenge for and for what? Heathcliff is trying to get back at Edgar Linton - he wants to revenge himself on their social class, and because he and Catherine despised them for their weakness as children, and finally, because Edgar is married to Catherine.

- Hindley, in kicking Heathcliff out, is the reason Catherine feels she would "degrade" herself in marrying him - he took his right to a heritage, and made him a servant, someone Catherine cannot marry if she wants to remain in her social class.

- Why is Heathcliff letting him live at Wuthering Heights? Heathcliff plays cards with Hindley, and Hindley wants his money - but he keeps losing, and he bets parts of Wuthering Heights which Heathcliff owns, piece by piece. Heathcliff even takes over the love of Hindley's son, Hareton.

- Does Heathcliff want to torture just for the heck of it? Yes - probably part of the reason he marries her, to torture and her, by separating the siblings, spiting Edgar.

- Can't-live-without-you-love - Catherine can't live without him, and Heathcliff says his soul is already dead when she dies. Is it the greatest love story for this reason? - because of the sacrifice and need for each other? Sacrifice and the need for another person are necessary to relationships in general, not just romantic ones. I don't know if complete fanaticism in both principles demonstrates a relationship's greatness. It shows a disregard to outsiders I find disturbing; everyone has more and less important relationships, but to shut everyone out in favor of one person is harmful, potentially dangerous, and selfish. Catherine and Heathcliff unnecessarily hurt a lot of people in the way they went about staying in contact. Maybe it's just the violence and brutality of their relationship that makes me doubt its place in the history of great romances. I'm all too willing to consider myself completely in the wrong on this one.

The last on "Wuthering Heights"

This is something that had not occurred to me until I read the preface to my book - which, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, is very, very old. Therefore, the guy who wrote the preface was from long, long ago, and he's probably very old himself or dead now. He pointed out that the imagination of the writer is so apparent in the novel because it is a work of imagination - Emily Bronte's imaginative soul is sunk into the cornerstones of this story.

I agree with this, more than I knew until I had it said to me so frankly. So often, a story can be enchanting, intriguing, creative, and explosive, all at once, but in the reading of it and the writing of it, the story has clearly been tamed. This might have been the conscious effort of a writer or his or her editor, but it could just as well have been a failure on the writer's part to dig up the whole story as he or she found it, and the resulting work is not a complete archeological find. This is not to say that this kind of writing is therefore worse or better than the other kind - it's the way most people write, and it's prevalent in literature published today. I know I write that way! It's very rare, and very hard, to write something that goes without those filters that tame and control writing. It becomes as much a mental as a physical effort to force the imagination, whole and alive, through the funnel of one's being and onto a page. I think the incredible life in this novel is due to Emily Bronte's ability to do that - she somehow dug out a story in one piece, and it is an untamed thing. I don't have to like it to admire it - what she created is a rare work of literature, for the reasons mentioned above.

Images I found after googling "imagination":

Notes on "Wuthering Heights"

Chapters 10 and 11:

- "It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire," ppage 107.

- "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again...", page 109.

- Why is Catherine like Heathcliff - not just similar, but why does she describe herself as being the same person? He is who she would be if she were allowed to do as she wanted - free, answering to no one, consumed with personal desires. They shared so much of their life together, and they shared all of what was important to them, that their desires and needs are practically the same. They experienced many of the same injuries, so a history of shared pain, loss, and neglect brought them closer. Something in the core of their souls, beyond anything finite and human, made them into one spirit split in two.

- Would you really want somebody you love to be so much you, and you so much them, that you're the same person? What kind of relationship is that? - is it good, is it bad? Are there any real-life examples of it? 1) No. No way. Not if you paid me. Being in my own head is enough, I can't imagine having to do all of that twice, simultaneously. I enjoy close relationships and friendships, but I draw the line at sharing brain-space. 2) It's a self-destructing relationship. Look where it got Heathcliffe and Catherine... 3) The only thing that comes to mind is the pure, crazy, all-consuming bliss of one's first requited love. You don't know any better than to let yourself fall headfirst, and after that you remember what it felt like when you finally hit the floor with your nose.

- Just because Catherine and Heathcliff identify so much with each other, are they really the same person? They are so isolated, they never really see love - they see ruthlessness, brutality, abuse, anger, etc. What kind of a model is that for people seeking happiness, when they couldn't identify happiness if it bit them on the foot?

- Similarity to twin relationships, the incestuous relationships of half-siblings in love - but the reality of that romance or that relationship could feel extremely suffocating. Does their (C & H's) isolation from everything and everyone make it easier for them to engage in this kind of a relationship?

- Nelly is separated from Hareton when Catherine marries Edgar Linton - the marriage goes well for three years, until Heathcliff returns from wherever he'd run off to. Heathcliff visits, and Isabella Linton falls in love with him (stupidly).

- Mawkish: 1. Excessively and objectionably sentimental. 2. Sickening or insipid in taste. (What Heathcliff calls Isabella - and its true. Oddly enough, he toughens her up into a more interesting character, though he has to torture her and neglect her terribly for her to reach that point).

- For Monday: through to Ch14 (haha! I've finished it!)

- Images I came up with after googling "revenge":
- Cat in a birdcage
- Cut-and-paste poster
- A "revenge" bunny
- Johnny Depp

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A paragraph on Heathcliff

If a contemporary psychotherapist sat down with Heathcliff, in a neutral, quiet setting with plush sofa chairs and a tape recorder, he might be diagnosed as sociopathic. He has little to no conscience (the biggest indicator of a sociopath), and even where it regards the love of his life, the focus of his entire being, Catherine, he thinks of himself first. He is extremely intelligent, but uses this intelligence to extract revenge on alleged enemies. The thing is, if he were to leave them alone and go about his life, these so-called enemies would never interfere with him.

Yes, he is also a fellow to be pitied. A childhood devoid of parental love and guidance hardened him early on, so that the only people he could feel for were himself and Catherine. He describes his life as an adult to be a living hell, a constant torture of being without Catherine but always haunted by her. It is made clear to him that he is unwanted by all, that he is a lowly, undeserving, dirty gypsy-changeling, an evil to the Earnshaw family and anyone he comes into contact with. Instead of recovering from this abuse, he uses it to plan longterm revenge on everyone who ever had a part in torturing him. Even when the plan loses its flavor, Heathcliff's every endeavor is to stamp his enemies and social betters underfoot. Very few of his actions are good or well-intended, and even what he does towards Catherine is tainted by his selfishness. He was an extremely unlikable, but very engaging character.

Class notes on "Wuthering Heights"

- Charlotte read to Emily while Emily died, including a review of her novel.

- Emily Bronte was later called a female Shakespeare

- Atmosphere of novel: dark, stormy, depressing, cold, windy, barren. Misanthrope: hatred of people. The landscape mimics the people, and vice versa.

- Mr. Lockwood ended up renting the house because he humiliated a woman who he loved, and who, after returning his affections, he withdraws from.

- Heathcliff: puts himself before anyone else (including Catherine, though he does not see it that way) - wild, almost to the point of not appearing to be human - hated by all, except for Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine. A harsh, brutal, dangerous man.

- Maxilary convulsions - grinding your teeth to keep from crying. (ie, Harrison Ford)

- Further discussion of "chopping women's bodies up " - intro to Pretty Woman; picture of Hugh Hefner with a girlfriend or wife, who is wearing a dress Marilyn Monroe made famous. Men's sex appeal gained through power and money - cuts up bits of their souls like women cut up their bodies to fit into the perfect role.

- Watched a youtube video of Harolde and Maude - one of the greatest movies ever.

Notes on "Rape in Cyberspace"

- 1 in 4 women is raped in their lifetimes

- "there are some things that are the same" - such as what?

- Differences between cyber rape and real rape

- Classmates Kait and Liz agreed that what Bungles did was a form of rape, though we did not think it ought to be punished to the same degree as "real life" rape. In addition, since the mind behind Bungles was sociopathic, is any punishment going to be effective? 

- Problem: WHO is Bungle?

- MOO, MUD, etc, all made-up places, so Bungle's victims weren't real victims the way traffic accident victims are. He was harming other people's characters.

- On the other hand, those people were emotionally invested in those characters, so they were emotionally affected.

- Class talked about traumatic texts - Clockwork Orange; cartoons involving the Joker; innocent animals being brutally killed in Japan during WWII, in case zoos were hit; The Exorcist; Romanian history, Vlad the Impaler - in a made-up place, there isn't a real victim as in, a victim in real life, but some other action is being performed, and it can be just as traumatizing.

- traumatic encounter with human capacity for imagination

- If there is an emotional investment in watching a character, is there such an investment in being a character?

- National phenomena of depression across U.S. after 9/11 perhaps due to availability of TV - footage of seeing people jump from the towers played over and over, and that shocking visual was everywhere. 

- Shock sometimes necessary to motivate people into action - examples?

- Celebrities - avatars

Wuthering Heights

I have a very old version of Wuthering Heights, part of a set of books I bought secondhand from a garage sale a very long time ago. I tried starting this novel twice, and never succeeded getting past the first chapter. There was something grotesque and illegible about the story that was very off-putting, so instead of torture myself about reading a classic piece of literature, I closed it each time. I am so glad that I have not only managed to move beyond the first chapter, but have read more than half the novel in the last two days - huzzah!

One thing I did not know: Charlotte Bronte's preface to her own sister's work was not enthusiastic at all - it was apologetic for the writing. The author of such a novel as Jane Eyre wrote, regarding Wuthering Heights, wrote that its faults included a "rude and strange" quality, a "rusticity", etc. Her inability to understand the novel makes sense, after having read some if it. There is a barbaric quality to the life these country people that belies the trappings of civility they show, and the characters are so wild.

All this time I thought this would be a novel of great, passionate love - and it is, but not between a couple I could have imagined on my own. Heathcliffe and Catherine are horrible people, and love each other because they are so like each other that understanding of the other makes acceptance of each other immediate. There is little to love about any of the characters, whose lives are as barren and wild as the moors they live on. So the great, passionate love is also a horrid love that eats things up like a fire consuming a house. I look forward to what other people say about these characters.